The GSI Outdoors Halulite Minimalist Complete system takes the popular Minimalist pot/cup and adds everything you need to boil water and prepare hot drinks. GSI Outdoors has always offered a wide range of high quality backcountry cooking products and they don‘t charge an arm and a leg for them. Now they have added a canister top stove to the Minimalist and a few other cook sets. Let‘s take a look at the pieces of Halulite Minimalist Complete.
The Halulite Minimalist Complete is based around the Minimalist cup/pot. The Minimalist is a really popular choice for solo ultralight hikers. With a volume of 0.6 liters, this cup/pot is big enough to boil water for dehydrated meals, but is small enough to use as a drinking cup/mug. A neoprene sleeve slides over the Minimalist to protect your hands and keep a cup of coffee or hot chocolate warm. The lid of the Minimalist has a good seal to hold it in place and stop dribbling when used for drinking. The plastic lid helps to hold in the heat and lets you drink from the cup without burning your lips. When boiling water, the lid flips over and sits on top allowing for easy removal.
A GSI Outdoors telescoping Foon is included in the kit. The collapsible handle slides and locks in place for eating. The construction is plenty solid and I‘ve had no troubles. A utensil with a longer handle is nice for eating out of cooking bags but for most other situations the Foon works great. To avoid poking yourself, make sure that the thumb and fingers are out of the way when collapsing the handle. A silicone rubber gripper comes with the kit and is used to pick up the hot Minimalist. Two fingers go into a pocket while the thumb is covered by a flap. Since the Minimalist is pretty small and light even with hot liquid, the gripper works well. An embedded magnet sticks the gripper to the side of fuel canisters so it doesn‘t get misplaced.
The GSI Outdoors Halulite Minimalist Complete System includes a lightweight canister top stove with its own stuff sack and a windscreen. GSI Outdoors says the stove offers 10,200 BTUs. This little stove boiled two cups of ice water in just over three minutes. I‘m used to alcohol stoves so this thing is almost like a backcountry microwave. The flame adjustment is very good with the wire handled control valve. Simmering is no problem with good flame control. The windscreen is pretty unique and nests inside with everything else. Both ends of the windscreen are folded over and just slide together. The folding arms of the stove have serrations to keep the Minimalist in place and the windscreen sets nicely into the notches. Using the stove and windscreen in high wind, the flame got blown around a bit but was never blown out. If you carry the small isobutene canisters, they fit nicely into the Minimalist cup with the rest of the kit.
Everything packs into the Minimalist cup, but I needed a bit of practice to get the kit packed quickly. Once I realized there is a hollow spot inside the lid, everything worked great. Just allow the handle of the Foon to stick up over the pot a bit and the lid covers everything. I‘m a bit worried that the windscreen will scratch the anodized coating of the pot but everything is fine so far.
On the scales the GSI Outdoors Halulite Minimalist Complete set weighed in at 10.3 ounces without the fuel canister and a bit less than 17 ounces with it. When packed, the kit measures about 4.2 inches in diameter and 4.6 inches tall.
The Halulite Minimalist Complete has an MSRP of $74.95. Considering everything that comes with the kit, I think this is a great value. Click here to visit the GSI Outdoors website.
I‘d like to thank GSI Outdoors for providing the kit for testing and review. We at Industry Outsider live on budgets just like everyone else, so being able to test these products allows us to pass along information that hopefully benefits everyone.